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S&B +
Me
Once upon a time, I could not be bothered with
soap operas. Seriously, you couldn't have paid me to watch any of them.
Sure, I knew the various titles of soaps. Sure, I had heard about
Luke and Laura, and I knew who Susan Lucci was. My mother has been
watching As the World Turns on and off since she was little. I saw
soap opera magazines at the supermarket and ignored them. I had watched
Julia Roberts up on stage at some awards show talking about how thrilled
she was to be seated next to the Days of Our Lives cast. I heard
a reference once to Passions' Timmy on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I knew from pop culture references that soaps were prone to "evil twins"
and "supercouples" and people coming back from the dead, as well as frequent
recasts and bad acting (once my cousin tried to get me to tune into a Mexican
soap opera and I oh-so-cleverly replied, "If I want to watch bad acting I
can do it in my own language!"). And that was basically the extent
of my soap knowledge. I never entertained the idea of watching one
myself.
For starters, I was always at school when the soaps came on...so it's not
like I ever had the time. None of my friends watched soaps, either.
The biggest obstacle to ever watching a soap, was, in my mind, the
fact that I am such a huge romantic, I didn't think I would be able to invest
in a couple on a soap only to watch them get torn apart later (since that
almost always happens to soap couples). If there's no real "forever"
for a soap couple, why set myself up for heartbreak? The way I saw
it, you couldn't have "soulmates" on soaps because soaps were always switching
up the partners. Soap couples couldn't be like my favorite movie, book
and television couples, so what was the point?
In the summer of 2002, I was getting ready to start college. I found
out the name of my dorm roommate, Ashley, and we began e-mailing one another
back and forth. In one of the e-mails, she asked me if I watched any
soap operas. When I wrote back, "No," she replied that she was glad,
because she was a General Hospital fan and she was worried that we might
have problems if I wanted to watch a soap that was on in the same timeslot.
I told her that I had never really wanted to watch a soap opera before,
because the concept didn't really appeal to me. She wrote back saying
that she used to watch General Hospital a few years back...and now she was
only starting up again because her favorite actress/character was returning
to the soap after a long absence. "Brenda," said, "was presumed dead,
and now that she's coming back she'll be able to reunite with Sonny."
Um...yeah. This was exactly what I had expected from
a soap opera -- "presumed dead" people magically coming back to life...oh,
and this Sonny character has moved on, married someone else? Brilliant...I
knew it, I always knew it -- soap couples aren't forever because they always
change up the partners on you. Ashley promised me that after sharing
a dorm room with her I would end up hooked on GH as well...in fact, she made
it her mission to see that I did become hooked. "No thanks," I thought.
"I'll pass."
Flash forward a month or so. It's August and Ashley and I had arrived at
college and were rooming together in a very small dorm room. She immediately
threw herself back into General Hospital. "And this show comes on every single
day?" I asked. Yes, she said...every day. "And are there any reruns?" Nope,
no reruns, she said. Every day is a new episode. "Even during the summer?
There are never breaks?" She told me that there are new episodes even during
the summer...and that soaps only take breaks on days like Christmas, or when
they are pre-empted. Hmmm...and I knew that General Hospital had been on
for decades, without being canceled. To me, a girl who had invested in The
WB's series Roswell only to have it canceled on two different networks...well,
I dare anyone who has known the threat of losing a favorite television show
to not be somewhat open to the idea of a series so established, it would
take a lot for a network to give it the axe.
Still, I wavered. Ashley tried to get me interested, but for the longest
time I only paid her the very slightest attention, choosing instead to resist
the pull.
Eventually, though, the pull became a bit too strong. Whenever a Brenda-related
commercial came on the television, Ashley would get incredibly excited...and
of course, I would watch the commercials right along with her. I remember
the first day they showed "Brenda's" back, Ashley just about hit the roof.
"It's her!!" "But why aren't they showing her face?" I wondered. "Because
it's just a body double. Vanessa Marcil hasn't returned to the set yet...this
is like a tease." During one of these "body double" scenes, they played a
brief bit of piano music and Ashley's excitement would rival that of a child's
on Christmas morning: "The music, it's their music! It's Sonny and Brenda's
music!"
I looked up from one of my text books. What I thought (to myself) was, "Oh
my God, she actually knows their theme music?" But what I said out-loud
was, "So every couple has a theme?"
"Well," she replied (somewhat smugly, I thought), "no, not every couple.
But Sonny and Brenda are special. They're a supercouple."
Sonny and Brenda are special? Sonny and Brenda are a "supercouple"?
My interest was officially piqued.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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